To me, wsa:Action is like the Subject: header of email. Clearly
the recipient can figure out the subject from the email most
likely, but we all put subjects to help the receiver "dispatch."
The subject tells the receive what the message is about and hence
implies to him/her what to do with it. wsa:Action plays the same
role IMO.
Do people think RFC822 was wrong to define a subject header?
Sanjiva.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Baker" <distobj@acm.org>
To: <paul.downey@bt.com>
Cc: <public-ws-addressing@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 9:36 PM
Subject: Re: WS-Addr issues
>
> On Fri, Nov 05, 2004 at 10:54:28AM -0000, paul.downey@bt.com wrote:
> > Jim
> >
> > > Certainly the utility company does not stick an action on the envelope
> > > like"urn:pay:up:or:supply:will:be:cut" which is the function of
was:action.
> >
> > my electricity bill is sent to "accounts department", "Southern Gas*,
London"
> > "accounts department" being the action in this case.
>
> Paul - why isn't the action "Southern Gas, accounts department" with the
> address "London"? Or "Southern Gas, accounts department, London" and
> the address "U.K"? Or "Joe-the-A/R-guy", "accounts department, ..."?
> You get my drift, I hope.
>
> I suggest to you that what you described is the address, not an action.
> The action, in the case of bill payment, is implicit and could be
> described as perhaps "process this", "accept this", "DATA"[1],
> "POST"[2][3], or any other generic/uniform semantic you might care to
> name.
>
> [1] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt
> [2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc977.txt
> [3] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt
>
> Mark.
> --
> Mark Baker. Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA. http://www.markbaker.ca